Bill Yount: "The Awesome Power In a Mother's Mantle"

From the desk of Steve Shultz:

Mothers are pillars in the family and have incredible strength to accomplish what is in front of them... yes kudos to all you moms out there!

In Bill Yount's latest article he shares the testimony of his mother's life - her struggles and faith, and the miracles that happened in their family's midst. This will get you charged to pray and stand in faith for your own family situations and SEE how God will turn hard situations around.

Yes there is awesome power in a mother's mantle and you'll read about this and much more!

I'm not sure how this works. But I believe a mother's mantle casts a long shadow. I saw my mother's mantle fall during the going away celebration at her church. It then unfurled like a tailor-made garment of love and continued to spread. I believe her mantle is imparting spiritual inheritance to many, even those who never knew her.

My mother, Gertrude Yount, went to be with Jesus on March 2, 2015. Multitudes have been touched and encouraged by her many healings and miracles that God gave her in this lifetime. But what I will remember the most about Mom is her persevering faith in spite of her many hardships. She found God in the storms of life. She touched so many people with God's love. She was 90 years old. She is now totally healed forever. (Photo: Gertrude Yount by Nicholas Smith/Memory Portraits)

Mom had an unusual request when she left this world. She said, "When they lay me in the casket, I don't want them to put any shoes or socks on me. I want to dance on the streets of gold in my bare feet." I called the funeral director and told him mom's unusual request and why. He agreed. Someone came up to me right before mom's funeral and said, "It's going to be hard to fill your mother's shoes." I said, "She doesn't have any."

Her Gift Was Love

Just hours before mom met Jesus, my sister visited her and said her face was glowing and she couldn't find one wrinkle on it. She was even walking on her own. One of my brothers stopped by, also, to see her minutes later. I called her around 7:30pm that evening and she said, "I was going to call you." Her voice was strong and clear. She told me that she had called my other brother Jim and talked to him also. Then within three hours of talking to us children, she left. The last words my brother heard my mother say was: "Tell everyone I love them."

When it came to loving people, Mom broke the rules. I remember growing up, when she took us five kids to church, she always squeezed other people into the car with us like sardines. On Sundays she would pick up a woman and her three kids (which made ten of us in the car). (Photo by Elizabeth Ashley German via Flickr)

Influenced by Kathryn Kuhlman

At eleven years of age, my mother often attended Kathryn Kuhlman meetings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She saw unusual happenings that forever changed her life. A huge goiter on her mother's neck instantly disappeared before her eyes. The next second, a five-year-old boy began jumping up and down shouting, "Mommy, where are you? Where are you, mommy?" The mother, on the other side of the boy, said, "Honey, I'm right here." Mom said, "I saw that little boy jump up into his mother's arms and began shouting, 'Oh mommy, I can see you! I can see you, mommy!' The mother cried, 'He was born blind!'" My mother got the mindset at an early age: This is the way my life is going to be. And it continued the rest of her life.

She was 4' 11" tall. She found the key to long life. Twice cancer couldn't kill her. The first time cancer spread through her body, the doctors gave her five years to live. That was forty-five years ago. At 87 the second cancer died through surgery. They got it all with no chemo needed. Years ago doctors witnessed a tumor disappear on her thyroid before taking a biopsy. Ten years ago doctors wanted to amputate her one foot. She told them, "Whenever I go to Heaven, I'm taking my foot with me!" Later they changed their mind. She kept her foot and walked fine. Most doctors who told her she wouldn't live long are gone. She kept outliving them. Her famous prayer when she got attacked was: "Lord, if I get weak and sick, how am I going to help anybody and reach the lost?" That's it! Then healing would start coming upon her.

After receiving that five-year death sentence with cancer, mom felt led to visit a different church in town. She went with Aunt Sophie. Aunt Sophie has been healed so many times, people thought she was crazy. They arrived early and sat near the front of the church before others got there. As soon as Mom sat down, she felt a hand touch her shoulder, shooting a bolt of electricity down through her body that burnt the hairs off her arms and legs. "I just knew God healed me of that cancer!" she said. They found out later that church didn't believe in healing. I think that's why God healed her before the service started. (Photo via Pixabay)

Mom loved to tell people of her healings and miracles. Then she would stop and say, "But you gotta repent!" as conviction fell on them.

New Blood is Flowing Into the Body of Christ

Late in life my mother had an ulcer on her leg that wasn't healing because of sugar diabetes. Doctors discovered the main artery in her leg was one hundred percent blocked with plaque that prevented the healing. Two doctors wouldn't touch it because she was 90 years old. A third doctor said, "I'm going to try it." (Sometimes we need to try some things that look impossible.) He performed a procedure called peripheral endarterectomy and told my sister, "I chiseled it. I kept chiseling it." Two days later he called my sister and said, "The blood is flowing!"

When I heard those words, I sensed the Lord saying to the Body of Christ, "The blood is flowing! The blood is flowing! I've been chiseling away at the blockages in your life. The blood is beginning to flow into the legs of my Body." The life is in the blood. Strength in our legs is coming from that blood. We are going to walk in newness of life. Walk in places we have never been. Do things we have never done. Try some things that look impossible.

An Unstoppable, Persevering Faith

That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. Hebrews 6:12

Mom was a fighter, a contender of the faith that was once delivered to the saints (see Jude 1:3). She fought for what she got. Her strong faith was like a runaway freight train that could not be stopped. In the Spirit, Mom could take out Muhammad Ali. She seemed to have the gift of faith. There were times and seasons when God seemed distant, when the healings and miracles weren't arriving on time. But her faith kept going. Mom's answer to Heaven's silence was: "I'll be OK. Let's see what God will do."

It was these bumps in the road of Mom's life that caused her to know the Lord like she did. Her life taught me: There's a whole lot of living between healings and miracles. And a whole lot of living after them. She knew how to run this race of life with patience. "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1). She ran with patience. Patience was her friend. (Photo via Ariel da Silva Parreira)

A faith so strong, yet childlike. I remember when the doctor wanted to amputate mom's foot. She told me her childlike prayer: "Lord, You don't need my foot, and I do."

This story seems to sum up the fabric of my mother's prophetic mantle:

A mother had a little daughter playing down the neighborhood. A storm was brewing, and the mother called the neighbor and said, "Send my little girl home, quick." The little girl started walking home two blocks away as the storm broke loose. A torrential downpour of rain beat the earth as thunder and lightning came crashing down. As the mother watched anxiously out her kitchen window, she noticed every time lightning flashed her little girl would stop and start to smile.

Several times as lightning flashed, her little girl again would stop and a smile would break out on her face. The mother, terrified, ran out of the house and down the sidewalk and picked up her little girl in her arms and ran inside the house. As they got into the house, the mother said to the daughter, "Honey, how come every time it lightninged, you just stopped and started to smile?" The little girl responded, "Mommy, all the way home God's been taking my picture!"

Oh, to have a childlike faith. To know in our worst storm, God is taking our picture. (Photo via Pixabay)

Raise your hands and receive the power in my mother's mantle right now: The gift of faith that only believes and doesn't know how to doubt. The patience that outlasts every storm. And God's love that breaks the rules.

And don't forget to smile. 'Cause all the way home God is taking your picture.

Bill Yount
Blowing the Shofar Ministry
Email: theshofarhasblown@juno.com
Website: billyount.com

Bill Yount has been a member of Bridge of Life in Hagerstown, Maryland, for the past 36 years where he is now an elder and a home missionary. He is currently an advisor at large for Aglow International. Bill faithfully served in prison ministry at Mount Hope for 23 years and now travels full-time, both in the U.S. and internationally, ministering in churches and Aglow circles. "Humility and humor" characterize his ministry as he brings forth a fresh word that is "in season," proclaiming the Word of the Lord! The shofar (or ram's horn) is often used in his meetings, breaking the powers of darkness over regions, churches, and households. The shofar represents God's breath blowing into the nostrils of His people, reviving them and awakening the lost. Many of God's messages, which Bill ministers prophetically, come out of his everyday life with his family and friends.

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